Greece’s parliament has banned a far-right political party led by a jailed former lawmaker from participating in the general election later this year, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Parliament published the text of a legislative amendment that will disqualify the Greek National Party on the grounds that its leader has been convicted of a serious criminal offense. Lawmakers approved the amendment late Wednesday.
Ilias Kasidiaris, who founded the breakaway party two years ago, is serving a 13-year prison sentence for membership in and being a former leading member of Golden Dawn, a political party of neo-Nazi origins.
A court in 2020 designated Golden Dawn as a criminal organization for waging a campaign of violence against migrants and ideological opponents. Kasidiaris and other members of the Golden Dawn leadership were jailed in the wake of the ruling.
Golden Dawn, founded as a neo-Nazi group in the 1980s, had become notorious for its blatant anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric, openly displaying copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” as well as other works on Greek racial superiority at party headquarters.
One of its leaders, Nikos Michaloliakos, has claimed that Nazi concentration camps did not use ovens and gas chambers to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.
In recent years, the party has been the subject of a crackdown by Greek authorities, with several of its leaders being arrested and tried.